Beth wakes up foggy. That one beat drives The Weekend Away. An American new mother based in London comes to in Croatia after a night out she can’t reconstruct, and her best friend Kate is gone. Kim Farrant directs, working from Sarah Alderson’s adaptation of her own 2020 novel. The result is a Netflix thriller that is messy, often silly and surprisingly hard to switch off. It never pretends to be anything finer than a potboiler. Most of the time that is enough.

The setup moves fast. Beth and Kate fly out for a weekend away, and over drinks Beth admits that her marriage has gone flat. They go clubbing, two men flirt with them, and Kate nudges Beth toward a one-night stand. Then comes the morning, and the blank. Beth’s husband Rob and the local police shrug at the disappearance, so the only person willing to help is Zain, the taxi driver who took the women to the club. Leighton Meester is at her best in this stretch. She plays Beth as someone who cannot vouch for her own memory, and the film keeps turning that weakness against her. The frustration shows in her face long before she raises her voice.

Ziad Bakri has the trickier job as Zain. A stranger who offers help to a frightened foreigner is exactly the kind of character a thriller wants you to distrust, and Bakri plays him with a wary decency that keeps both readings open. Early on, Beth gets Kate’s purse and phone back after Zain threatens one of the men from the club. The film then explains who those men are. They are escorts hired by Kate, and they are also con men who drug and rob the women they service. It is a neat piece of misdirection, and it is the film at its most economical.

After that, the plot stops being economical. Kate’s body is found. Her phone holds messages between her and Rob that reveal an affair. Tests show drugs in both women’s systems, which backs up Beth’s claim that she was dosed, but the police who first shrugged now call her in as the main suspect and take her passport. Then they accuse her of hiring Zain to kill Kate. Sebastian, the man who rents Beth her accommodation, turns out to record his guests, and his footage shows Beth being put to bed early and Kate being robbed by the escorts. It also shows Kate climbing into a taxi to follow them and coming back in a different car. That car belongs to Pavić, the policeman who had doubted Beth from the start, and the taxi driver’s account backs it up. Zain gives himself up so that Beth can slip away.

Each of these reveals is plausible enough alone. Stacked together, they strain belief, and the middle of the film has the feel of a script clearing its desk. When Pavić falls to his death in a struggle with Beth and the police close the case, the film seems to be over. It isn’t. Back in London, Rob wants to reconcile. Beth finds beads from a necklace she gave Kate in his coat pocket and confronts him with the police on the line. He admits he flew to Croatia to stop Kate from exposing the affair. The reveal is sound, and because the texts surfaced so much earlier, it lands as confirmation rather than shock. But the film tacks it onto an ending that already felt finished, and the confrontation carries less weight than it needs.

The casting is uneven. Christina Wolfe’s Kate is a presence in flashes and a name everyone else keeps repeating, and the friendship we are meant to care about never quite takes shape beside Meester’s intensity. Luke Norris plays Rob as a man who is always slightly elsewhere. That suits the last scene, but for most of the running time he is a plot device. Amar Bukvić has a thankless job as Pavić, who has to be suspicious and then guilty, and Adrian Pezdirc is given little more than a camera and a landlord’s smirk as Sebastian.

Critics have split along predictable lines. The review on RogerEbert.com calls it the best kind of purposely preposterous potboiler, with gorgeous scenery and twists that keep the adrenaline pumping. Another review credits Meester with anchoring a film that is taut but thin. One IMDb viewer lists the continuity errors and still calls it an above-average thriller. I land somewhere in the middle. For the record, Netflix’s top 10 counted 79.95 million hours watched between 27 February and 20 March 2022. That figure says people pressed play, and nothing more.

What stays with me is less the plot than the friendship at its centre and the betrayals around it. Beth loses Kate, learns that Kate was lying to her, and finally finds out who in her own home is responsible. Farrant never digs very far into any of it, and the film is poorer for that. Still, the Croatian scenery and a lead who sells her confusion go a long way. This is a thriller that wants your Saturday night, not an essay. On those terms it delivers more than it should.

Cast

Leighton Meester as Beth — Leighton Meester — Beth

Christina Wolfe as Kate — Leighton Meester — Beth

Photos: The Movie Database (TMDB)

Tags: Netflix, thrillers, Christina Wolfe, Kim Farrant, Leighton Meester, The Weekend Away

The Weekend Away is a silly, addictive Netflix potboiler that knows exactly what it is

Cast

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